25 April 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
About the service
Magic House (commonly known as Magic Life) is a supported living service providing personal care to people with varied physical and mental health needs, including people with a learning disability and autistic people. At the time of the inspection, the service comprised 16 supported living settings in the form of houses and purpose-built flats, most of which were located in North London.
Not everyone who used the service received personal care. CQC only inspects where people receive personal care. This is help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do, we also consider any wider social care provided. At the time of the inspection, the registered manager reported 86 people were using the service, out of whom 46 people received personal care.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Right Support:
People were supported by trained staff to take their medicines. However, we found inconsistencies in how medicines were managed, mainly around guidance on some medicines and audits.
Staff focused on people’s strengths and promoted what they could do, so people had a fulfilling and meaningful everyday life.
People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.
Right Care:
Staff understood how to protect people from poor care and abuse. The service worked well with other agencies to do so but the management team did not always notify CQC of safeguarding incidents as required. Staff had training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it.
People’s care and support plans reflected their range of needs and this promoted their wellbeing and enjoyment of life. The service assessed people’s risks and enabled them to take positive risks where appropriate.
The service had enough appropriately skilled staff to meet people’s needs and keep them safe.
People received kind and compassionate care. Staff understood and responded to people’s individual needs.
Right Culture:
Managers evaluated the quality of support provided to people, involving the person, their families and other professionals as appropriate. However, existing quality assurance systems were less effective in some areas, including medicines management, statutory notifications and staff training.
People were supported by staff who understood best practice in relation to the wide range of strengths, impairments or sensitivities people with a learning disability and/or autistic people may have. This meant people received compassionate and empowering care that was tailored to their needs.
People and those important to them were involved in planning their care.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection
The last rating for this service was good (published 12 March 2020).
Why we inspected
The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about medicines management, assessing risks to people and staff competencies. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only to examine those risks. You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service has changed from good to requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Magic House on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement and Recommendations
We have identified a breach in relation to good governance.
We have also made a recommendation around the safe management of people’s medicines.
Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.
Follow up
We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.